Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/400168
To be sure, the concept of reselling used apparel is hardly any newer than the cloth- ing itself. In 1991 Chip Gergen and Gerald Block saw they could profit from reselling secondhand garments, so they co-founded Berkeley, Calif.–based Crossroads Trad- ing Co., which now operates 35 stores, most of them in California. The chain is about the size of Tucson, Ariz.–based Buf- falo Exchange, another secondhand up- and-comer, which has 30 stores around the country. Thus neither of these is big enough just yet to distract segment giant Plato's Closet, which caters to teens and tweens through some 300 stores nation- wide. And yet that may only imply that these hungry smaller competitors have nowhere to go but up. Today Gergen and Gabriel Block, son of the late co-founder, are follow- ing their growth instincts to new places. They have launched Fillmore & 5th, an offshoot of smaller shops — at 1,200 to 1,500 square feet, these are less than half the size of the 3,500-square-foot hE sAlE oF usEd CloThInG, whether called secondhand or vintage or gently used, is exceedingly popular now. And with celebrities like Kim Kardashian having taken to cleaning out their closets by selling their secondhand duds on eBay, we may well be at the place where used apparel meets celebrity auction meets spring cleaning. Crossroads stores — that offer designer clothes on consignment. For the most part, the Crossroads Trading stores buy brand-name, though not necessarily cou- ture, apparel from sellers who, though less famous than Kardashian, perhaps, are equally eager to make room in their wardrobes. The Crossroads Trading shops buy this clothing for cash or offer the sellers an option of store credit. "Fillmore & 5th is a way for us to pursue an additional, higher tier of mer- chandise than we offer at Crossroads," said Block. "Crossroads' top 20 percent of inventory is F&F;'s bottom 10 percent." The company operates three Fillmore & 5th shops, in California, one of which is at Town & Country Village, a Palo Alto mall. There is also one in san Francisco T secondhand chic the growing respectability of used-clothing stores such as fillmore & fifth has earned them a place in the mall, some observers say r e T a i l i n g T o d a y 36 S C T / n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 4 O P C / Z O J W E N N P h O t O s / N E W s C O m